Science Saturday- Frogs Edition

Frogs, frogs, glorious frogs. I’ve always adored frogs. I would spend hours in the garden as a child staring at the pond watching the tadpoles develop from little black dots in the frogspawn, then with tails, legs and finally fully developed frogs. I collected any and all frog themed paraphernalia. So imagine my absolute delight that Sir David Attenborough naturalist and owner of one of the worlds most soothing voices, loved frogs too and created a programme solely based on our amphibian friends.

The programme (no longer available on iplayer) was an absolute delight. Even though I have been an avid fan of the creatures I certainly learnt quite a few things! I’ve picked out a few of my favourites (all pictures and clips below from the BBC website).

The Wood Frog. Every cell in its body freezes (glucose in each cell stops the cell from dying) and helps it survive the frost in the winter. As the temperature increases in Spring it defrosts and resumes its routine, until the next winter.

The Giant Monkey Frog moisturises itself when there are dry seasons, to prevent itself from drying out. Watch here

Panamian golden frogs voice is too quiet to be heard against the rivers which they live. So they have developed sign language to show their competitors they have claimed their territory. Watch here

The male Darwins Frog is a real 21st male! He carries his tadpoles around in his throat and ‘vomits’ them up to release the froglets! Watch here

This is part of what I hope will be a new regular series exploring my love of Science each Saturday!

Lastly here is a clip on the wonderful episode (which I’m sure will be shown again), mainly as an excuse to see Sir David with a frog on his head!